


Concrete

by RarePairFairy



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BAMFs, Beacon Hills is a Beacon for Weird Shit, Emotional Constipation, M/M, Sheriffs name is John, Slow Build, Stilinski Family Feels, dork dads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-26 22:58:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RarePairFairy/pseuds/RarePairFairy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Season 3 mid-season finale. Chris Argent does NOT have a man crush.</p><p>Except maybe he does, a bit.</p><p>There are hostile creatures appearing in inconvenient places around Beacon Hills, and three families - the Argents, the McCalls and the Stilinskis - are resembling a taskforce. </p><p>Chris is beginning to realize that he's tired of watching loved ones get hurt. Sheriff Stilinski couldn't care less, because he's been trained how to use a gun and the bad guy's getting away, so on your feet, old man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’m already doing Nanowrimo this year on top of university so this is going to be my contribution to Rarepair November. I think Chris Argent and the Sheriff would make a genuinely good couple. They just match.  
> P.S, daunt is totally my number one fandom hero, hands down. She’s not just a great artist and creative individual, she also encourages peace and love among Teen Wolf fans. My dream is that she will come across this fic and enjoy it.

The hospital was manifesting the atmosphere of a ghost town. Even the patients that hadn’t been relocated were checking out of their own free will. Half the building, for the first time in as long as anyone could remember, was empty.

‘It’s depressing,’ Melissa had said. ‘I’d always imagined a quiet night would be peaceful.’

There had been an increase in deaths by up to 55% throughout the hospital over the course of one weekend. That, combined with the rumours of a horrifying beast stalking the corridors, killing and maiming as it went, wasn’t something that could be hidden from the patients. By the following Friday it had started going after doctors.

Initially it was only meant to be Chris and Allison dealing with it. Chris had theories, but had not come across such an angry, vicious spirit on his own in a long time and needless to say a hospital was the worst place for it to appear. Melissa wasn’t going to stay out of it when her place of employment and her patients were under threat, and she had the advantage of knowing the place better than anyone else. Scott wasn’t going to stay out of it because he was Scott, and Stiles naturally went where Scott went, wielding some advice from Deaton, a protective talisman in his pocket and five minutes’ worth of psyching himself up in the car park. Finally, the Sheriff had arrived in his now-normal state of futile frustration at not having an explanation for what was going on, only a natural suspicion that something malicious was lurking and it was part of his job description to go after malicious lurkers.

And so it was Friday night, Chris Argent was stalking through the Oncology department feeling woefully underprepared and trying to take his mind off the man in the badge in the waiting room near Emergency. It was the only part of the hospital retaining its usual flow of human bodies, if for no other reason than because there was nowhere nearer for badly injured people to go. Both the Sheriff and Melissa were there, while Scott and Stiles monitored the children’s wing and Allison tried to be surreptitious in Recovery. Those were the sites where the creature had been most frequently sighted. They all grimly hoped that the sightings in the children’s ward were the result of overactive and frightened imaginations, but no-one could be sure.

The phone in his hip pocket buzzed and Chris spared a glance at the message as he adjusted his grip on his crossbow. Oncology was one of the emptier wards, and after not passing a nurse or a doctor in about ten minutes, Chris had returned to his habit of approaching corners pointy-end-first.

 _No sign of It_. -- S Stilinski

Chris, already having Stiles’ number, had accidentally placed the Sheriff under the same name in his phone out of woeful ignorance of the man’s actual first name. He could only tell the difference between the two because Stiles had been making Ghostbuster references in all of his texts.

The phone buzzed again.

 _No Zuuls in this fridge_. – S Stilinski

Chris huffed. Getting used to working with non-professionals was going to take time.

Sheriff Stilinski looked and sounded nothing like his son. That was the first thing Chris had thought when he began paying attention to the man as something other than another blissfully ignorant civilian. He was serious in a fed-up and exhausted kind of way, and it had annoyed Chris at first. He thought, _you haven’t seen enough to have that look_. But, the Sheriff had. He worked in law enforcement. He had seen and dealt with the worst of humanity. He had to deal with the paranormal without even knowing what it was. He’d had to suffer the kidnapping of his only child. He had to put up with said child’s regular midnight escapes. And he had even been through the worst emotional trauma Chris himself had been through, only he had done it first, and tackled a drinking problem simultaneously.

The more Chris thought about the Sheriff, the stupider he felt for brushing him off. It wasn’t a sensation he was used to. The colossal change involved in no longer being an active hunter, except in special circumstances of course, made plenty of room for the feeling of a new chapter of his life beginning. It made it easier for him to think of the Sheriff as someone he could perhaps admire. For the first time in decades, he _wanted_ to be close to someone.

Allison gleefully referred to it as his man-crush.

 _Nothing here_ – Allison

That left Chris’s area. He scoped the corridor out once more, keeping his ears pricked. Then he sent a confirmation to the others. He knew any normal person would feel relieved. He only felt apprehensive. This only meant it was in _another_ area of the hospital. Out of the four areas they were covering, three were among the emptier wards. The spirit must have moved on the greener pastures, Chris supposed, and lowered the crossbow before starting off towards the elevator.

As he reached the door, a sick slurping sound reached his ears. He spun on his heel and raised his weapon, and in the two seconds it took to do that, something seven feet tall and oozing red-black chomped the end of the crossbow, bending the metal and breaking the cord, squealing as the arrow buried itself in the back of It’s throat.

Chris was pushed back into the open elevator with a shout and the spirit muscled its way inside, dropping the crossbow with a clatter and smothering Chris into the corner. Its knobbly back scraped the ceiling and its arms bent awkwardly against the walls. Chris tugged a knife out of his boot and slashed upwards at the dripping hands that scrabbled toward him. Somewhere in their cramped struggle a button had been punched, and the moment the door closed the elevator began to move.

Chris forced down the urge to vomit as the spirit’s smell filled the claustrophobic box, and little spots of the ooze flecked onto his skin with every increasingly frantic swipe and stab of his knife.

One of the hands closed around his skull as the other got a hold of his wrist, twisting sharply and making him drop the knife. The first thought to enter his mind was Allison.

The second was the Sheriff.

The third was a spasm of a thought, gunfire, the alarmed shout of a patient, and a _ding_ as the doors opened, though not particularly in that order. He hadn’t even registered the lack of movement of the elevator until he looked up, and there, haloed by the bright rectangular lights of the second floor, stood Sheriff Stilinski with a federally issued firearm that Chris was vaguely aware of having supplied to state police about eighteen months ago.

‘That’s what an angry spirit looks like,’ he said, mouth downturned in disappointment. ‘I thought it would be more … well. Ghost-like.’

‘You don’t want to know what ghosts look like,’ Chris said idly, raising a hand to his head. It came away sticky with ooze. Sheriff Stilinski shuddered.

‘Well I was going to offer you a hand up, but now you’re on your own.’

Melissa patiently explained to the badly-timed passing patient that he was suffering hallucinations brought on by his medication, cooing promises to talk to his doctor as she wheeled him speedily down the corridor and around a corner. She and the Sheriff spent the next half an hour explaining to people why gunfire had been heard, as the others hastily relocated the hulking, steaming, grotesque body out the back of the hospital and to an abandoned location to dump it in a ditch.

The teenagers went to the McCall’s house to keep the place warm for Melissa until her shift officially ended, and the Sheriff took Chris up on his offer to head back to his apartment and do the hunter equivalent of paperwork.

‘So shooting it in the back of the throat with a crossbow didn’t kill it, but a single bullet in the back of the head did?’ the Sheriff asked, clinking a beer bottle in bewildered celebration.

‘Shooting anything in the head is likely to at least slow it down. We use the word “spirit”, but they have physical bodies. And when there’s a sentient thing with a body, there’s usually a brain.’

That earned Chris a nod and raised eyebrows, as if the Sheriff was sure he was learning something new and interesting, but processing it was going to take a few hours and probably more than one beer.

‘There’s no such thing as the bogeyman or the Big Bad Wolf, Sheriff,’ Chris said, settling on one of the few entirely true and useful things his father had once told him. ‘Just because they aren’t in any anthropological textbooks doesn’t mean they’re mystical. The laws of physics still apply to them.’

The corner of Sheriff Stilinski’s usually downturned lips quirked up at that, and he nodded. ‘I prefer a no-nonsense attitude,’ he said. ‘And call me John, for godsakes.’

Chris was unexpectedly relieved he wouldn’t have to suffer the embarrassment of asking John what his name actually was. Whether his smile was interpreted as amusement or dawning brotherly affection, the rest of the night was spent in relative peace, discussing monsters of the monstrous and of the all-too-human kind and obliterating Chris’s modest beer supply.

By one in the morning, the Sheriff – John – was asleep on the sofa, and Chris was ferreting about in a closet for a spare blanket. Failing, he gave up and went to his room. Beacon Hills was suffering a cold snap and heating was expensive, so Chris had put two blankets on his bed. He stripped the top one off and returned to the lounge room to see John lying flat on his back, one arm thrown across his face and the other across his middle, feet crossed and propped up on the armrest. He only just fit on the sofa.

Chris stood, feeling tired, and looking down at the man who had saved his life hours ago.

Being a hunter meant regularly putting his life in danger and having it saved by a rotating team of distant family members and fellow hunters. He had no idea what made this experience new, or what to name the feeling thrumming in his chest, but he gazed down at John for a few moments more before gently draping his blanket over the sleeping figure, careful to press it down around the man’s shoulders.

Then he returned to his room, and failed to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to have to ask people to suspend their disbelief re: near-empty hospitals. I'm sure running them would be impossible, but that's not the focus of the story. I just needed the place to be empty enough for there to be crossbows and evil spirits.

Three mercifully quiet days passed. John called Chris and asked if he wanted to have lunch. It was the first day off he’d had in some time, and the only one he was expecting for some time to come. They went to a diner Chris had never been to before, where the waitress knew John’s name and gave Chris an appraising look that made him feel sure it had been a long time since the Sheriff had taken anyone out to lunch. It both warmed him and intimidated him.

Hating himself for sounding hesitant, Chris asked why John wasn’t spending the day with Stiles. John smiled a little lopsidedly. ‘I _live_ with the kid. Anyway, he’s roped Scott into a Star Wars weekend marathon, and it’s being treated as an event of cosmic significance.’

Chris tried to imagine Allison in the role of Stiles, hyperactivity included. His imagination violently revolted against the idea and instead they somehow wound up sharing stories of their children as toddlers, being dressed up by their wives in frilly things and capelets and “cute” hats. It didn’t occur to Chris until hours later that it was the first time he had spoken to anyone at length about Victoria since her death. It was certainly the first time he’d thought of her since her death as a mother who dressed up her little girl in nice clothes, rather than as a work partner, a skilled teammate, a committed hunter.

Chris glided through Monday at ease and yet also conflicted, sure of only one thing; he was going to return the favour and ask the Sheriff out to dinner.

Then a nurse Melissa had known for two years was found in the ER with her ribs shattered and her throat full of pus that wasn’t hers.

Chris was already in his car. Allison’s bow was in the back seat, and as soon as he picked her up from school they were going to head straight for the hospital. The nurse’s death was being kept quiet lest patients continue to leave, but Melissa had called around the minute she found out.

Pulling up besides the sheriff’s car, Chris wasn’t surprised to see Stiles half-leaning, half-sitting on the hood and texting frantically.

‘Scott?’

‘His mom already let him know what’s going on,’ Stiles said, not looking up. Then he stopped, and dropped his arms to his sides. ‘I thought you said my dad killed that thing.’

‘I was sure he had,’ Chris said. He wasn’t in the mood to try and inject any apology into the sentence, but Stiles must have glimpsed sincerity or some other acceptable alternative, and dropped the subject just as Allison marched straight out the front door and up to the car.

‘Did you pack the flash tips?’ she said by way of greeting.

‘You have three combustibles to choose from,’ Chris said. ‘I brought the daggers as well. I want you to be prepared for close and long-range combat.’

Stiles dashed from the car to meet his father halfway down the walkway, and Chris nodded to John over the bonnet of his car before getting back into the driver’s seat. No words, no subtle blame was exchanged.

He drove to the hospital slightly over the speed limit. Allison screwed her arrow heads of choice onto the shafts, balancing the case on her lap, and Chris glanced between her and the road and the rear-view mirror trying not to look immediately for the tight, wary eyes of the Sheriff through the afternoon glare on the county car’s windscreen.

Melissa met the men in the waiting room. Allison had gone around the side and Scott was going to help her and Stiles avoid unwanted attention, given Allison’s heavy weaponry and Stiles’ negative recent history with hospital-centric disasters.

‘I thought the body was dumped,’ she said, looking harried. ‘Why would it come back here?’

‘It feeds mostly on sick bodies,’ Chris said under his breath as a doctor passed them, glancing only briefly at the Sheriff. ‘A hospital is the perfect place for it.’

After suppressing a grimace, Melissa focussed her gaze on them meaningfully. ‘There’s something new I didn’t tell you over the phone,’ she said.

‘New? Do you think we might not actually be facing the same spirit?’ John asked.

‘I haven’t seen the killer, I only saw the body, and it looked just the same as the first victims. But I _have_ seen something else, and I know it’s not what killed Jodie.’

Chris focussed on her tone. He had been trained to pull seemingly innocuous but necessary facts from unknowing and confused witnesses. He knew how to zero in the things that turned a serial killer case into a werewolf case.

‘There’s another kind of spirit in the hospital?’ he prompted. Melissa nodded. But as she glanced between the two of them, she didn’t seem frightened.

She seemed, if anything, pitying. Bewildered, and pitying.

‘There’s two. I think they’re the only things stopping this spirit-whatever from turning the whole hospital into a self-serve buffet. I want you to know that, before I tell you what I saw.’

Chris wasn’t used to being the confused one. Impatiently he narrowed his eyes and leaned in, before feeling a hand land heavily on his shoulder. John’s hand. He hesitated. Then he followed the Sheriff’s gaze to the far end of the corridor, where a large black figure was sliding unnoticed around a corner.

Melissa turned just as it vanished, but she must have gathered from their expressions what they’d seen because she took a step back to let them pass.

Rounding the corner at a near-jog, they followed the corridor and didn’t catch any sign of the spirit until they hit the stairwell. The only thing lingering in the corridor was a faint stench of decay.

‘What’s downstairs aside from bins?’ Chris asked.

‘An ambulance bay and storage.’

Chris’s pocket buzzed just as John’s did.

‘From Allison,’ Chris said. He chanced a look at John’s face. It was unreadable.

 _Stiles followed something into the morgue. Request backup_. -- Allison

‘From Scott,’ John said. His voice was clipped. ‘We should go.’

Every fibre of Chris’s being wanted to ask what, in that case, did they just follow to the stairwell? But he couldn’t. He wordlessly followed John at a run. He watched the efficient movement of muscle beneath the crisp khaki uniform and didn’t think about how Stiles was John’s only remaining family. He listened for the tell-tale sound of movement behind them, and didn’t think about the thing Melissa had been so reluctant to tell them about.

When they reached the morgue Allison was leaning against the wall with her bow lowered and Scott was sitting on the ground. John barged past into the morgue, and Chris double-checked the clip in his 45.

‘He’s all right,’ Scott said. His voice was flat, and he looked for a moment just like his mother had. ‘I wanted to stay with him, but he’s still … he just pushed us out of the room.’

Chris looked from Allison to Scott, then to the heavy door. There was no sound from inside. He opened it and went in.

Stiles was sitting on the shining autopsy table, head in his shaky hands. John was standing before him with his hands on his son’s shoulders, talking quietly, trying to get Stiles to respond. He looked over his shoulder as Chris approached.

John managed to get Stiles out of the morgue, but he couldn’t get him to speak. Scott and Allison did not say what they saw either.

‘It wasn’t the spirit, at least?’ Chris double-checked.

‘We’d have told you if it was,’ Allison said. She was the least stunned out of the three teenagers, but carried herself with an uncharacteristically jittery edge. They all agreed to split up again and return to the same places they had investigated on Friday night. John tried to convince Stiles to go and sit in the car, but Stiles shook his head and finally spoke.

‘I’ll stay with Scott. I’ll be fine.’

‘You don’t look fine,’ John said doubtfully. Stiles half-shrugged, and looked at his father with a mixture of helplessness and annoyance.

Then a smell hit their noses.

‘Looks like we don’t have the option anyway,’ Chris said, nudging John in the side. Lightning-quick, Allison raised her bow and Scott got his claws out before John drew his gun.

Looming in the harsh white of the hallway, dripping black, the spirit bared its teeth and opened its jaw wide until Chris could glimpse the shaft of his arrow still embedded in the back of its throat. One of its sunken eyes was covered by a sickly green growth which had emerged to cover the gaping hole the Sheriff had blown in its head. With a rapid swing of its arm, it sent Allison and Stiles flying sideways to land dazed on their backs. Scott was slammed into the floor, the spirit stomping a foot down on his chest when he tried to get up. John shot it again in the head, but the bullet pinged off the green growth as if off a bulletproof shield. Chris fired two rounds into its chest before a bony hand shot out and shoved him into a wall, striking John’s gun from his hands in the same blow. Stunned, Chris almost missed the white thing flickering in the corner of his sight, and all of a sudden a woman stood solidly between John and the hideous monster now reaching for his head.

Stiles and Allison had gotten to their feet, facing the bizarre image from the side. Allison knelt slowly to pick up her bow but Stiles was utterly frozen. The spirit paused, and lowered its hand by an inch.

The woman wore a hospital gown. She faintly glowed, like early sunlight through frosted glass. A clear tube ran under her nose and hooked over her ears, and another tube was still attached to the back of her hand. But despite being slightly emaciated, her lips were full and her eyes were bright.

Beneath her tumbling chestnut hair, a couple of moles were clearly visible on her neck and cheek.

John let out a shuddering breath, and Chris realized who she was.

‘You,’ Claudia murmured, and the spirit seemed to _vibrate_ , ‘need to leave.’

Either out of unsureness or actual fear, the spirit decided not to risk the sudden pale apparition and took its foot off Scott, slipping away down the hall as quickly as a bird’s shadow.

Claudia turned around and looked almost meekly at John, who stood rooted to the spot. Then she looked at Stiles, who was inching forward with wide, watery eyes.

‘I hoped I wouldn’t have to put either of you through this,’ she said, hushed and apologetic. ‘But I suppose it’s a bit late for that. Hello, boys.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 0_0
> 
> I just want Stiles to look like his mother.


	3. Chapter 3

Numbly Chris thought, _this must be what Melissa saw_. Who _Melissa saw_.

‘We don’t have much time until he comes back,’ Claudia said. ‘My only real advantage is shock value, and I’ve used that up.’

No-one said a word. Claudia had the grace not to look impatient. Chris and Allison, followed by Scott, pulled themselves together. John and Stiles remained stock still. Claudia looked fondly at them both.

‘It won’t follow you out the front door. Walk with me. I’ll tell you what I know and you can pool your resources in a safer location. I can handle the brute for another 10 hours.’

She seemed to consider before reaching out her hand, the one with the drip in it, to John.

His face was a myriad of feelings, disbelief, relief, anguish, that Chris hadn’t seen there before, not even when a ceiling was collapsing onto their heads and they thought they were going to die tied up in a cellar.

John slowly lifted his hand and placed it over hers. The comparison of their skin made her look even more unreal. She reached out her other hand towards Stiles, who now stood within three feet of her, silently mouthing _mom_ , though he couldn’t bring himself to speak. He lifted both hands without hesitation and closed them around her fingers, his chest visibly rising and falling with each uneven breath. Chris saw Stiles as a child for a moment, fearful and unable to understand what was happening, and he understood why Claudia hadn’t wanted her husband and son to see her again.

‘Walk with me,’ she repeated softly.

They followed the Stilinskis as Claudia spoke, stepping silently on misty white feet, almost merging with the floor as if she had, over time, become a part of the hospital itself. John and Stiles didn’t loosen their hold on her hands the whole way.

‘It’s made up of all the things that go wrong with a body. Tumours, growths, infections, blood clots, even that black stuff that comes out of werewolves. I saw Cora when she was here, and Isaac too. I know about them. And about you,’ she said, glancing at Scott. Scott was so frazzled that he made no reply. ‘It gets its strength from the illness of those around it. The less patients there are in the hospital, the less it has to feed its presence. I don’t know if it knows, or if this is like the story of the frog and scorpion and it just doesn’t care.’

‘Are you saying we have to evacuate the hospital to weaken it? Because I’m not sure we can manage that,’ Chris said, walking slightly behind John.

He felt intrusive, being the first one to speak directly to her. When she turned her gaze to him, Chris found himself scrabbling to remember everything he’d said or done in the hospital, everything she might have seen, and wondered frantically how she saw him now. He felt greedy as well as stupid. He had never met Claudia when she was alive (because they were walking with a dead woman and that was so easy to forget because she had such presence, and Chris wondered how charismatic she must have been when she was alive), and he cared so much what she thought, because she was John’s _wife_.

‘Emptying the hospital would be good if it could be managed, but no, I agree. It would also be impossible to cure everyone with major illnesses in the time it would take to prevent more deaths.’

With the spell of sacred silence around her broken by Chris addressing her, Scott tentatively offered a suggestion of his own.

‘Maybe cutting off the source of its power isn’t the way to stop it,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’ve just been using the wrong weapons.’

‘It’s made of sickness,’ Stiles said, with a barely concealed tremor. Claudia turned and looked at him encouragingly. He faltered for a moment under the weight of an expression he hadn’t seen on a face he hadn’t seen since he was a child.

‘You can’t beat an infection by punching it, but you can destroy it with antibiotics,’ Stiles said. Claudia made a pleased affirmative noise, as if to subtly say _Look everybody,_ _my son_ _was the first one to figure it out_.

‘I’ve seen it take great pains to avoid stepping on a spilled bottle of cough syrup. That thing hates medication. Fill some bullets with penicillin, and I bet if you cover a dagger with antiseptic it’ll terrify the beast.’

They were reaching the entrance to the hospital. Claudia slowed as they were passed by a doctor with his face in a file. Allison tucked her bow between herself and the wall. The doctor kept striding, muttering anxiously to himself.

‘Everyone’s been so stressed,’ Claudia said quietly. ‘People usually are here. But, moreso than usual.’

At that, Stiles’ brows drew together, and he squeezed her hand repeatedly. ‘Have you been trapped here the whole time?’ he asked, voice weak with emotion.

Claudia, for the first time since appearing, looked unhappy. She lifted Stiles’ hands to her face and tucked them under her chin. His voice cracked when he tried to speak, and he shut his mouth and blinked rapidly.

‘Not trapped, honey, no. But I have _been_ here the whole time.’

She smiled then, and Chris felt a final blow of _stupid_ hit him. Of course she couldn’t care less what Chris was like. She would have been there the night of the storm, watching her son stand beside werewolves in a fight to rescue his father, must have been there after Lydia was attacked by Peter and watched her son stay for days providing moral support to a girl who barely saw him. She must have watched her husband go about his duty, even been happy for him when he made Sheriff. If she ever paid attention to anyone else it would have been to Melissa, the mother of her son’s closest friend.

‘I’ll still be here,’ she said seriously. ‘Count on it.’

Then she stepped back, merging into the blue-grey paint and Stiles and the Sheriff were left with empty hands staring with shining eyes at nothing.

The sacred silence returned and blanketed them all. Chris gave John and Stiles ten seconds to be shaken and frozen and human, then he placed a hand gently on John’s back. Scott did the same to Stiles, and the two Stilinskis turned from the wall and shakily let out the breaths they’d been holding.

‘My mom can help with any medicines we might need,’ Scott said softly. Stiles, still numb, just nodded.

‘We have a well-stocked first aid kit at our apartment,’ Chris said. ‘We should regroup there.’ Gently he pulled John in the direction of the exit, and the teenagers followed, Allison subtly placing her hand at Stiles’ other elbow. They both must have noticed that they were being treated like breakable things, but neither complained. Chris decided that for once, they were allowing themselves to be breakable. He couldn’t judge them for it.

At the Argent’s, John and Chris emptied out the leftover wolfsbane bullets Chris had stashed at the back of a storage closet and refilled them with ground-up pills from the medicine cabinet. Chris didn’t mention, not even to Allison, that some of them were the prescription drugs that Victoria had refused to take during her last hours. He didn’t know why he had kept them, but he was glad that they were seeing use. He hoped Victoria would be proud.

Allison customized some arrow tips using a variety of liquid medicines, and Scott sat with her and helped while trying not to scrunch up his nose. Stiles, still uncharacteristically quiet, fitted arrow tips to shafts the way he had been shown. Isaac had texted and offered to join the mission, but either out of wanting him to stay safe or wanting this particular fight to stay personal, between just the six of them, Scott told him to sit this one out.

When they returned it was dark. Melissa, after being called by Scott, had insisted on staying even though her shift was over. There weren’t enough people in the hospital for odd behaviour to be noticed, not if everyone was careful, and she had been monitoring how heavily each ward was populated.

‘Meet it in the ENT department, that place is completely empty tonight. You won’t have to lure it. It’ll come to you. You’ve got it angry now,’ Melissa said over the phone. No-one asked how she knew, or who had told her.

They placed themselves strategically according to what they’d planned at the apartment. There was an open space in ENT, a sort of small discharge lounge connected to a larger ward. Scott and Stiles, appropriately armed, would block any escape attempts once the spirit was in place and Chris and Allison would aim to deliver the killing blows. The Sheriff would be in at the spirit’s back, keeping it from retreating away from the Argents.

Claudia wasn’t mentioned. They all agreed without saying a word that she was not to be expected to appear. Whether it was for sensitivity or sensibility’s sake went also unmentioned.

Melissa met them and led them quickly to the right place. Scott was anxious for her to get to the car, get home, but she went with them all the way to the discharge lounge. Then she raised a spray bottle of something smelling like disinfectant.

‘It kills any bug it touches. Think of it like spirit mace. I’ll be fine. You be careful,’ she said, and kissed Scott on the cheek.

The moment she turned to leave, an ominously familiar sound filled the lounge. The spirit, preceded only by a thin drizzle of bile, dropped from the ceiling and thudded onto the edge of the ward. The width of the corridor running between the ward and the carpet of the lounge where they stood ran between them, but with the spirit risen to its full eight foot height, it loomed over them.

Chris pulled Melissa to stand behind him and Allison, who raised her bow.

The spirit leapt forward, then screeched hideously as steam rose from its feet. Stumbling back, it continued to steam painfully until it was back in the empty ward.

Chris glanced at Melissa and was surprised to see her smiling. At his expression, she shrugged one shoulder. ‘I dropped about three cups of epinephrine into the janitor’s mop bucket. I honestly didn’t think it would work.’

Chris grinned, suitably impressed, and looked back at the spirit. Outraged, it stared back at them. Then it squawked as Allison fired an amoxicillin-tipped arrow into its arm.

It stepped back, and jolted when the Sheriff fired two rounds of pill bullets into the backs of its thick legs. Its head turned all the way around in a grotesque owl-like swivel, and it spat a mouthful of blood in his direction.

The boys retaliated, Stiles with his super soaker water pistol full of diprivan and Scott with two fungal-cream-laced daggers. John wiped at the blood, choking and spitting frantically onto the ground. Just as Scott tore into the spirits remaining eye with a jab of his dagger, it spurted a stream of black into his face, forcing him to collapse onto the floor to retch.

With Scott out of the firing line, Allison and Chris raised their weapons. The spirit took a blind wild shot in their direction and Melissa barely leapt behind a chair in time to avoid being sprayed with a foul-smelling greenish-yellow gunk.

‘This is by far the most disgusting thing we’ve ever fought,’ Allison said between dry-heaves. Chris, sleeve still over his mouth, glanced around the room. Blood-soaked and still intermittently spitting, John was hesitantly raising his gun. The spirit had placed itself directly between him and the Argents, and if he missed there was a chance he’d hit them. He looked like he knew it. Scott was still on the floor, struggling to breathe. Stiles had taken cover after realizing that whenever he hit the spirit, it only angered it and told it his approximate location.

‘You’re not doing so well, are you,’ said a gentle and sadly familiar voice. ‘I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay out of it.’

And there she was again, appearing on the walkway between the spirit and the Argents as if out of a mist. The spirit’s jaw creaked, and it seemed to _grin_. For the first time, and to everyone’s surprise, it opened its mouth and spoke.

‘Age is not an advantage here, little wraith,’ it hissed.

Claudia clasped her hands in front of her. ‘Not much, no,’ she conceded. Her utter lack of fear bolstered Chris, and he raised his gun again. So did John, despite looking pale. ‘But I’ve brought my brand new friend along this time,’ Claudia continued. The panels in the front of the vending machines at the far end of the lounge, and the glass panels set in windows and dividers throughout the ward, shivered and cracked.

‘And she’s bigger than you.’

As if on command, the rectangular light above the spirit crashed down with enough force to buckle its weakened legs. Claudia looked over her shoulder at Chris and Allison, and in that moment Chris felt there could be no-one else she was referring to. His heart plummeted.

In the flickering light a figure appeared, standing beside Claudia with the rigid posture of an admiral and the poise of a dancer. Slightly taller and with much shorter hair, it strode forward and placed its hands on the spirit’s shoulders, dragging it onto the epinephrine-laced floor where it billowed steam and shrieked.

Allison’s hand flew to her mouth, once again staggered, only this time not out of nausea.

Victoria turned around and looked at them. Then she looked at Claudia.

‘You said you wouldn’t call me unless it was absolutely necessary,’ she said sternly. Claudia smiled apologetically.

‘I know.’

Victoria turned back to Chris and Allison. Steam and noise filled the ward behind her. The effect, pale and grim as she was in those same clothes she had died in, made her positively spectral.

‘I got the impression you had stopped hunting,’ she said. Her voice was as arch as it used to be, and Chris had to adjust himself to believe he was hearing it again.

‘We’re still doing our job,’ came a voice at his side. Chris turned, and Allison was standing with him holding her chin high. For a split second it looked like defiance, and Chris was utterly confused. Then he looked between them, and saw the way Allison’s jawline was like Victoria’s, and how they had the same level gaze. It wasn’t defiance.

‘We’re still protecting people.’

Victoria returned Allison’s gaze, and nodded once in approval, or perhaps in recognition.

She wasn’t going to hold their hands, or look guilty for appearing when she felt she was needed. She wasn’t going to be charming and ethereal like Claudia. She was still Victoria. It was incredibly reassuring.

The spirit became limp and started to melt. The smell intensified, then receded. Scott wobbled to his feet, and threw the daggers at the body. Claudia went to stand with Stiles, and under her advice Stiles gave the dissolving spirit some experimental shots of his water pistol. The smell almost vanished.

‘That was sloppy work,’ Victoria said. Chris felt bizarrely that she ought to sound more disapproving, but said nothing. He looked at Allison again. She was a strange combination of resolute seriousness, attentive as a soldier standing before a general, and profound emotion. Her eyes were shining but she did not allow herself to cry.

‘We should have aimed for the head and struck sooner,’ Allison said dutifully. Victoria nodded, this time less sharply, as if she was glad this mistake was small enough for Allison to learn from, and trusting her to implement it.

Beyond the strange, yet devoted picture that was Victoria and Allison, Chris could see John out of the corner of his eyes. He was leaning against the wall absently wiping at his bloodied shirt, as Stiles and Claudia stood, heads together. Stiles was openly crying. He was also smiling.

He felt an ice blue pair of eyes settling on him, and focussed instantly on Victoria. Allison, whether because she had been told or out of civic duty, had gone to check on Melissa as Scott dragged himself to his feet, giving Victoria a wide berth as he skirted around to join his mother.

With their brief moment of privacy, Chris let himself smile.

‘I’d say “I never thought I’d see you again”, but that would be too maudlin,’ he said. Victoria raised her eyebrows, and tilted her head slightly in agreement. ‘I’d have thought if you were staying rather than moving on, that you’d stay at the house,’ he commented, wondering as he did if “moving on” was not in fact a human invention and not an afterlife requirement.

‘As much good as that would do. I heard the boy’s mother saying the two of you had moved.’ She said “the boy” firmly but with a tolerating element that let Chris feel as if he was being let off the hook for something.

‘An apartment, further downtown.’ Chris didn’t know why they were having such an ordinary conversation, but he felt like he needed it. He knew in his gut that this _would_ be the last time he’d see her. The dead weren’t meant to speak to the living, and Claudia and Victoria’s reappearance would not be repeated.

‘I’m surprised to see you socializing,’ he heard himself say. Victoria had never made a friend that wasn’t for the purpose of work or for the sake of having a cover.

‘She has years of experience in being what we are. Her knowledge was useful while I was still … _adjusting_ ,’ Victoria said. The word came out reeking of distaste, as if the thought of needing to adjust ought to be beneath her. Chris felt a wave of affection wash over him, and unconsciously reached out both hands to take hers. Victoria accepted the gesture.

It was like touching a solid shadow.

‘I’d say “being dead is very different to being alive”, but that would be too obvious,’ Victoria said, a touch of sadness making its way into her voice. ‘Although the company is diverting. I’d go so far as to say it’s fascinating over here.’

‘I’m glad you’re not bored, at least,’ Chris said. He didn’t ask what she did nowadays, or what she planned to do. He didn’t ask anything.

But his eyes flitted back to John, who stood before Claudia, and their eyes met for a split second across the walkway as it finally cleared of steam.

Victoria squeezed Chris’s hands lightly – like being _pinched_ by a shadow – and said under her voice,

‘You are still alive. So is he. And he sympathizes with you more than anyone in this town ever will. You _know_ how I feel about time-wasters.’

And with one final motivating squeeze of her hands, she walked over to Allison, gliding eerily the way Claudia had, and Chris turned away to give her daughter a chance to finally say goodbye to her mother. His heart, for the first time that night, pounded in his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote Allison and Victoria the way I did because Victoria thinks it’s really important for Allison to be a skilled and prepared hunter. She really wants Allison to live to a ripe old age and be successful. I interpreted her this way while watching the show and I think this is her way of showing love. I wanted Allison to show her mother that she understands, and show her wanting to please her and be a good daughter.   
> Imagine their last goodbye in whatever way works for you.


	4. Chapter 4

‘Strong personalities make strong ghosts,’ Claudia explained. ‘She might not be as old as me but she’s got a heck of a powerful will. That’s how she was able to man-handle that spirit when I couldn’t touch him at all.’

Chris didn’t jump when Claudia appeared before him. He had been alone in ENT, performing another “final check” on the area. It was five hours after everyone else had left. Allison was asleep at home by now. He had checked on her before returning to the hospital. Scott and Melissa were at home and John and Stiles, if they weren’t still up and talking about what had happened, were probably also asleep. It was stupid o’clock in the morning, and Chris had returned to the hospital, and he barely knew why.

He examined a fleck of black still staining the carpet (he was glad he wouldn’t have to explain this to the cleaners when they arrived and saw the mess they hadn’t all been able to clean up before leaving). Then he rested his weight on the arm of the one of the chairs, raised his head and looked at Claudia.

Even with the tube running under her nose and the shadows under her eyes and the suggestion of frailness about her, she seemed more alive than some living people Chris had known.

‘Victoria isn’t listening, if you’re concerned,’ she said. ‘She respects your privacy.’

‘I was just thinking that you seem like a strong personality,’ Chris said plainly. ‘You’ve got a kind of power, I’m sure of it.’

Claudia smiled, and the word “radiant” entered Chris’s mind. ‘That’s kind of you,’ she said. ‘You’re very earnest. I can see why John likes you.’

Chris’s mind faltered a bit at that and Claudia noticed. She lifted a hand and placed it gently on his arm. He could barely feel it, except for the hint of cold.

‘He doesn’t really have a type,’ she said. ‘He just used to latch onto people at random when we were in college together. He used to trust people. Then he started training and became a deputy and he got cautious. These days, I don’t know if he even lets himself have friends. Just people he works with. I don’t think he’s latched onto anyone in years. But he’s latched onto you.’

Chris tried to read her, the way he read witnesses, the way he read creatures and other hunters. He couldn’t see a thing in her face. ‘Are you warning me?’ he asked, inwardly thankful for the years of training and experience that helped him keep wariness out of his voice.

‘No.’ There was that radiant smile again, tinted with humour. ‘I’m saying _thanks_.’

Chris looked at his feet and wondered. He mentally compared himself to Claudia. With what little he knew about her, she was effortlessly good-hearted, came across as intelligent and endearing and even sweet. He was mechanical and standoffish compared to her.

‘You looked thoughtful,’ Claudia commented.

‘Why are you talking to me now?’ Chris asked. He was going to reserve the question, ask at the last minute if her agenda remained unclear, but he could no longer imagine her having an agenda. The more time he spent in her company, the more confused he became. And, quietly and childishly in a smothered corner of his heart, the more despairing he became of how unappealing and undesirable as a partner he must appear in comparison, to someone who had once loved her.

‘I guess I’m just nosy,’ Claudia said baldly, and the little smirk that followed that reminded him so much of Stiles that he thought again, _he and his father look nothing alike, because he looks like her_.

‘John was upset for a moment, when you and Victoria were talking,’ she said, and she said it so casually that, in the moment, Chris could pretend that they were talking about the TV or about a recent game of soccer or baseball. ‘He said to me, “ _I did so badly. I did badly by our son. I messed up without you._ ” And I just looked at Stiles, and then I said to him, “ _Look at our brave, wonderful boy. You did just fine._ ” And he honestly seemed surprised to hear it. Not to hear that our son is brave and wonderful, because he obviously is, and you’ll never convince me otherwise,’ she said matter-of-factly. Chris nodded affirmation. Stiles was brave, and a committed friend (among a lot of more sporadic and mildly annoying other things, but brave and committed all the same).

‘He was surprised that I wouldn’t blame him. He was surprised to hear me tell him that he was a good father. He never remembers what he’s done right, because that’s just the standard he holds himself to so he only ever remembers his mistakes. I guess what I’m trying to say, he’s gruff and hard on the outside, but on the inside, he needs a little support. Knowing he’s trusted, knowing he’s loved, really works wonders for him.’

‘Are you telling me this because I’m attracted to him?’ Chris blurted. The mounting thoughts and moments of _stupid, stupid, stupid_ exploded then and there and he wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed like a sulky teenager and refuse to come out until Claudia vanished and his inadequate idiocy was forgotten.

Claudia, unhelpfully, giggled. ‘Well. Yes.’

‘So you’re giving me advice on how to woo your husband?’

Claudia smiled again, but it wasn’t a smirking smile this time. This one was genuine, the kind of reassuring smile she had given to Stiles. ‘He hasn’t been my husband in a long time, Chris,’ she said earnestly. It sounded like something she had made peace with. ‘He’ll remember me, but I’m a memory he keeps photos of for the sake of our son. I’m his late twenties and his early thirties. You? You’re happening right now. You’re the steady, experienced paranormal investigator with the gorgeous blue eyes who always keeps his cool and makes John feel like it’s possible to live in a world full of nightmares and still be an honourable man. You’re the guy he can’t keep his mind off. And I’m so incredibly happy that he hasn’t become so guarded and afraid of pain that he’d shut this out, because for the first time in so, so long, he’s falling for someone, and that someone is falling for him too, and if anyone can understand him and love him for who he is, I really do think it’s you.’

The unexpected burst of sincerity made Claudia glow, if possible, more than before. Chris felt a bit of unrestrainable awe seep through his carefully organized and compartmentalised mind. He reeled at the thought that this was how the Sheriff saw him – steady, blue-eyed, honourable. He wondered if John had said that to Claudia, or if she had inferred all of this from watching him over time.

He remembered the way their eyes had met across the room.

‘I won’t push. It’s up to you two. But believe me, there is a future out there in which you can both be happy again. It’s worth aiming for.’

Chris left the hospital at 5.30 in the morning, tired and yet wide-eyed awake, emotionally exhausted yet elated, unwilling to trust what he desired too soon, _eager,_ wary, _wanting_ , wanting to wait.

He decided firmly that he would wait until a reasonable time of the morning. He’d do it properly. Just because they were both men didn’t mean he didn’t have to be a gentleman.

He’d let John sleep in, maybe till about 9 or 10. Then he’d drive around, maybe offer to help with breakfast, check to see how they were doing. He’d get the Sheriff alone, maybe in the kitchen making coffee or maybe out the front before getting back into his car.

Then he’d get around to doing what he’d intended to do. He would ask John out to dinner.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOOOO PERMISSION FROM THE WIFE  
> I know. I should have left it. I should have left it, perfect and lovely and hopeful. But I couldn’t. I just had to write more Claudia and Victoria. They are ghost BFFs. Bonding over their hopeless men and having nothing else in common.  
> I have so many Claudia headcanons you have no idea.

‘Look!’ Claudia chirped. ‘Matching husbands.’

Victoria glanced over to where Claudia pointed. The Sheriff was standing with his hands on his hips, talking to a doctor. Victoria hated men who casually placed their hands on their hips. As a pose, it was unnecessarily mannish and adopted unconsciously by authority figures from other authority figures, making them look “effortlessly in charge” and irritatingly arrogant.

Needless to say, Chris had adopted the hands-on-hips from the Sheriff, though thankfully he wasn’t doing it now. He had adopted it despite once needing only to look someone in the eyes in order to establish his hierarchy over them.

If he had ever been in a position of power over the Sheriff, he had given it up in favour of acting as his unofficial equal.

But that was what their marriage had been, really. Equal partners in responsibility and duty. Gerard had pushed for their relationship and their marriage when they were young, as he had seen a reflection of his own brutal professionalism and voracious commitment to the cause in her. He had thought she could keep merciful, conscientious Chris in line with what their job really was; to kill things that were too dangerous to live. And she did, for a while. They were friends before they were lovers, and friends and partners in business and in marriage. They knew each other because they grown together, in work and in life.

And now, Chris was applying a similar pattern of love/work partnership to a slightly stunted, cautious courtship with another man. Someone he hadn’t grown with, but who already knew what painful duty and responsibility was like and would understand when Chris rolled over in bed and needed to be kissed because he couldn’t get to sleep at two in the morning. And Claudia was right, though she might not know how right she was. They matched. They paralleled in many ways. They were emotional, determined, loyal bloodhounds. Unknowingly, on the inside, they compensated for one another’s hidden sensitivities.

‘I wonder if they finish each other’s sentences,’ Claudia chuckled. ‘I hope they do.’

‘Give it another month, give or take a romantic weekend.’ Victoria said, crossing her arms. They leaned against the waiting room counter, and watched.


End file.
